PAMELA spectrometer data processing

Abstract

The international space experiment PAMELA was started in the mid-2006 and was finished in the beginning of 2016. The main objective of the experiment was the study of the cosmic ray spectra and elemental composition (including antiproton and positron spectra) in a wide energy range. The main instrument of the PAMELA device is a spectrometer including several detectors. Since the case in point here is the technique of processing the results for high-energy particles (protons, α-particles with energies E ≥ 50 GeV/nucleon, electrons and positrons with E ≥ 50 GeV), the three detectors were mostly used in data processing: a tracker placed into a dc magnetic field, a calorimeter, and a neutron detector. A relatively simple technique for separating electrons and positrons from the total flux of charged particles arriving at the spectrometer and a technique for determining the energy of these particles and constructing their energy spectra are described. This paper is based on the results presented in [1].